hope won't hide the loss
by katriel1987
Summary: It was official: Cam didn't just dislike Dean Tyler. She hated him.


**title:** hope won't hide the loss  
**author:** katriel1987  
**rating:** strong T for whump and naughty language  
**characters:** Dean, various OCs, a bit of John and Sam  
**category:** Gen, preseries, hurt/comfort  
**word count:** ~8500  
**disclaimer:** Not mine; not getting paid; I'm just playing with them.  
**summary:** It was official: Cam didn't just dislike Dean Tyler. She _hated_ him.  
**notes:** Title from _Surprise_ by Jars of Clay. Sources of fascinating information about ranch life in general and calving season in particular: 1) my close friend Em from Wyoming, and 2) an article I found at w w w . montanacowboycollege . c o m.

* * *

The new guy at school was gorgeous, all worn denim and leather, and Valerie's band of glittery airheads couldn't stop tittering about him. Cam didn't like him, though. Sure, he was pretty, but he was cocky and he used too much hair gel and he didn't even try to pretend that he wasn't staring at her ass every time she walked by. Guys like him made Cam _almost_ glad she barely had boobs—yeah, she couldn't fill out any dress ever made, but at least the jerk looked at her face when he talked to her.

He'd only been at school for a week when she went into the gym to get her bag and caught him making out with Jori under the bleachers. Her feet melted to the floor, and she stared, her face afire. And the new guy—Dean—had the nerve to look up and _wink_ at her.

That got her feet unstuck, and she did a screeching U-turn and left the gym without her bag.

It was official: Cam didn't just dislike Dean Tyler. She _hated_ him.

* * *

Cam's chest had felt hollow for a long time (five months, one week and two days), like her heart was hanging in empty space with nothing to beat against. The day after the gym incident, though, there was a new deep-down ache, a million little rat teeth gnawing at her from the inside. She told herself it was probably just from getting up close and personal with a thousand pounds of bovine stupidity, but she hadn't been body-checked by a cow in weeks.

She shouldn't have been upset. Jori was hot, and Dean was hot, and they both had eyes. There was no reason they _wouldn't_ get together. If Jori had seen Cam's abrupt departure from the gym, she was probably wondering what the hell had caused it. No way was Cam going to tell her. She wasn't ready, maybe never would be.

They'd been friends since preschool, but Cam was still terrified that Jori would turn away if she ever told her the truth.

* * *

Thursday night, calving kept Cam up until 2 a.m. When the hard birth was finally over, Cam headed for the house, leaving the spindly-legged little creature to get cleaned up by its mama's rough tongue. The wind was whiskey-sharp, and it burned Cam's eyes when she stepped out of the calving shed.

On her way to bed, she left a trail behind her: coat and boots in the mud room, one glove on the kitchen table, scarf on the living room floor, the other glove on the stairs. She managed to pull the blankets over herself but passed out with one foot still touching the floor. The deep sleep didn't last long; she jerked awake from nightmares three times before her alarm went off at 5:45.

After beating the clock until it shut up, Cam slithered out of bed in slow motion, avoiding the pile of filthy clothes she'd dropped on the floor the previous night (the ones that had actually made it to her room). The jeans were so stiff with blood and amniotic fluid that they practically stood up on their own. She stared at the dark brown stains for a moment, and a steel band clamped down on her chest. It felt like asthma, but she knew it wasn't.

She kicked the crusty jeans under the bed and staggered toward the bathroom, breathing in jerky rusty-hinge gasps. _Calm the hell down. You're all right. You're fine._ It had been a month since the last attack and she was _not_ going to have another one, not going to risk Mom finding out and changing her mind about the damn shrink.

Cam's breathing eased up in the shower, and by the time she came out, rubbing a towel briskly over her short blond hair, everything was back under control. There was just enough time left before breakfast to put on mascara. (She wasn't a big fan of makeup, but her eyelashes were totally invisible without mascara, so that was the one thing she refused to go without.)

Mom looked like she was sleepwalking, eyes only half open as she set plates down in front of Cam and Abby. It was waffles for breakfast, again. At least this batch didn't taste like baking powder. This time, they just had the texture of cardboard and refused to yield to the onslaught of teeth or fork.

Breakfast passed in silence. Cam considered getting a steak knife to cut her waffles into bite-size pieces. Abby sighed expressively every once in a while. Mom just stared down at her waffles, looking at them like they had betrayed her. Like they were a puzzle she could solve if she tried hard enough.

* * *

Jori wasn't at school that day; her cousin Daniel said she was home with the flu. Cam vengefully hoped that Jori had passed the illness on to Dean while they were playing tonsil hockey.

At lunch, Valerie and her entourage of cotton-candy-brained followers started gathering recruits for something. Cam walked faster, head down, but she had been spotted.

"Hey, McAllister!"

She stopped.

Valerie said, "We're going to the old Halloran place tonight. You want to come?"

The Halloran place. Of course. "No thanks," Cam said, trying to project as much aloof boredom as possible.

Valerie laughed, loud and sharp, silencing the room. "Oh, come on, cowgirl." Her eyes sparked with challenge. "You aren't afraid of ghosts, are you?"

That put steel in Cam's spine, as Valerie had known it would. For a self-centered bitch, she was pretty good at knowing exactly which buttons to push. _Which makes her a self-centered,_ manipulative _bitch,_ Cam thought.

"Fine. Count me in," she snapped, and turned sharply, coming face-to-chest with Dean Tyler. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. He wasn't winking now, nor smiling that maddening _I'm-so-badass_ grin that Cam would have loved to wipe off his face. He actually looked... worried. Maybe _he_ was afraid of ghosts.

His eyes drifted past Cam to Valerie. "Look, Valerie... maybe this isn't such a good idea."

That was definitely nervousness in his voice, and it made Cam fiercely happy. She wanted to shout it out to the whole cafeteria: _Look, everybody! Mr. Badass is scared of Casper!_

But she wasn't Valerie, so she just stood back and watched.

Valerie laughed. "Are you serious? You're scared to go to a haunted house?"

"No!" Dean said, too quickly. People were starting to snicker, and there was a flush creeping up Dean's neck above the collar of his brown leather jacket. "It's just... someone died there," he said defensively. "It could be dangerous. For, you know. Other reasons."

"Oh my God." Valerie gave Dean her high-beam derisive stare. "I can't believe it." She rose suddenly, sashayed over to Dean and stood so close to him that her boobs were practically squished against his chest. Tilting her head back, she smiled brightly up at him. "It's okay, Deanna. We won't make you come with us. You can stay at home, where there aren't any scary ghosts."

"What—I didn't..." Dean's uber-cool act had long since departed. It didn't make Cam quite as happy as she would have expected.

Dean closed his eyes, took a deep breath, probably counted to ten. "Look," he said, "if you go to the Halloran place, I'm coming with you. I just really wish you wouldn't."

Valerie slid her hand up his chest to the open collar of his shirt. Leaning forward, she kissed him delicately on the cheek. "We leave at dark," she said. "Come with us or don't."

She walked away, leaving Dean standing alone in the middle of the cafeteria, wearing the expression of a pole-axed steer. He sighed, rubbed his chin, and said a quiet phrase that raised Cam's eyebrows.

"Take my advice, Tyler," she said. "Don't let a teacher hear you say that."

Dean gave her a distracted smirk. "Know that from experience, McAllister?"

"Yep," Cam said, and walked away.

* * *

The old Halloran place was sprawling and silent in the icy moonlight, a weather-beaten collection of abandoned buildings and corrals. Every structure had its own spooky story; the house was unique, since someone actually had died there, and not all that long ago. Cam had been maybe seven years old when it happened, but she remembered hearing about it, remembered demanding that Daddy check the closet for ghosts before she'd go to bed. Remembered his lips on her forehead, his soft voice: _"There's no such thing as ghosts, Cami. It was just an accident, that's all."_

Then he would ask her if she thought they should pray for poor Rachel Bayer's family. She would nod and say yes, because Daddy had liked to pray, and even as a seven-year-old Cam hadn't had the heart to tell him that she didn't want to believe in any God who would kill Jori's pretty baby brother with cancer.

"Hey. Earth to McAllister." Valerie snapped her fingers in front of Cam's eyes.

"What," Cam said, without enthusiasm. While she'd been lost in her own personal ghostland, people had been scattering out to explore barns and sheds and corrals that were presumably haunted by the spirits of cows who had died traumatic deaths. The only people left at the car were Cam, Valerie, Dean, and Valerie's flavor of the week, Brandon Davis.

"We're going to explore the house," Valerie said. The bitter cold just made her look prettier—cheeks apple-red, eyes bright. "You want to come?"

"Yeah, whatever." Didn't make much difference. The _aurora borealis_ was the most interesting thing they'd see tonight, and that only if they were lucky.

Dean still looked stressed, and Cam almost felt sorry for him. Who knew? Maybe he'd had a puppy that was brutally murdered by a ghost, and he'd seen it happen, and had been traumatized ever since. Or maybe he was just chickenshit. It wasn't really her business either way.

The door of the house was hanging half-off its hinges, the unpainted wood gray and splintered. It creaked ominously as Brandon pushed it aside. Dean was taut as a drawn bowstring, and he took a careful look around before stepping inside.

The interior of the house was musty and smelled like rats and somehow managed to be even colder than the outdoors. Cam shivered and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. The cold was making her nose run and her eyes water. She sniffled loudly, well aware that Valerie would find it disgusting.

"Let's go to the basement," Valerie said. It wasn't a suggestion. Valerie didn't do suggestions.

"Isn't that where that girl died?" Dean said.

"Yes, pansy-ass. That's why we're going there."

"Shit," Dean breathed, too quietly for anyone but Cam to hear him. He was acting a little like a sheepdog, trying to keep everybody herded together (which wasn't easy, because Cam _liked_ her personal space). She was starting to wonder whether he was concerned for himself, or them. The thought was a tiny bit disturbing, because if he were merely chickenshit he'd be worrying about his own hide.

Brandon went first, and Dean the Sheepdog brought up the rear, doing his twitchy tight-strung thing. It was really starting to get on Cam's nerves.

The basement was a little bit warmer than upstairs, but it smelled even worse. Cam was totally willing to believe that it was haunted by the spirits of decayed vegetables. There were rows upon rows of crooked shelves stacked with jars—some broken and dusty, some filled with what appeared to be radioactive sludge. Cam knew it was too cold for spiders to be out, but there were old webs hanging around like tattered lace, and looking at them made her skin crawl.

"Hey, Dean," Valerie said, inspecting one of the nuclear-waste jars. "I bet you wouldn't take a drink of this."

"Oh, yeah? And what do I get if I win the bet?" Dean said, going for lecherous, but his heart wasn't in it.

Brandon swung his flashlight slowly across the length of the cellar, and then—completely out of the blue—he let out an abbreviated shriek and went flying back into the shelves.

"Brandon!" Valerie shouted, scrambling after his spinning flashlight. Dean turned in a quick circle, holding his own flashlight out in front of him like a weapon. Cam just wished she _had_ a flashlight.

Valerie found Brandon's light and pointed the beam at him. He was pale in the dim glow, eyes closed. There was blood on his forehead and shards of glass in his hair.

"Brandon!" Valerie scrambled to his side, lay the back of her gloved hand against his cheek. "What the hell was that?" She said to the room at large; then, "Brandon, wake up, dammit!"

"You need to get out of here, all of you," Dean said loudly. "Get the hell out!"

But it was a little late to run, because the _thing_ that attacked Brandon was back. It looked like a projection, like a hologram of a jerky character from some old black-and-white movie. It was transparent and it flickered and _they were all going to die._

It took Dean out first; just a flash of motion and he hit the floor with a resounding thump. As soon as he was down, it went after Brandon again, moving impossibly fast. Valerie screamed but she didn't run, just threw herself over Brandon's body like she could protect him from a fucking _ghost_.

_Weapon,_ Cam thought, _find a weapon!_ There was an empty shelf behind her, covered in dust and cobwebs, the center board hanging by a few rusty nails. She wrenched it free and lurched forward, her mouth dry with fear. Brandon was out and Valerie was being _brave_ and they were both going to be dead if she didn't do something.

The thing was fixated on Brandon, and on Valerie who was still screaming. Cam planted her feet and swung the board like a baseball bat, so hard that she staggered forward when the swing encountered no resistance. The thing parted like fog around the board, but she had its attention now. In jerky flash-motion it turned to face her, and oh. Oh.

_Poor Rachel. What happened to her was very sad, but it was just a terrible accident. Do you think we should pray for her family?_

_Yes, Daddy._

A bomb went off in Cam's head and the next thing she knew she was face-down on musty boards and her mouth tasted like dirt and blood. Through the ringing in her ears she heard Dean yelling something at Valerie, and then the _boom_ of a gunshot.

"I'll get Cam! Go!" Dean shouted, and Cam got her head up high enough to see Valerie sling Brandon's arm over her shoulders and drag him bodily up the stairs.

Dean was pale and there was blood on his forehead, but he was back on his feet. There was a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand—and seriously, where the hell did _that_ come from?

He offered Cam his other hand. "We've gotta get out of here. It'll be back."

When Dean pulled Cam to her feet, the house gave a crazy lurch like the deck of a ship and she did a face-plant into Dean's chest. Her head was throbbing and she guessed his was too, because he almost went over backwards when her weight landed on him. He got his balance and steadied her with a hand on her back.

It was then that Cam felt the bone-deep chill directly behind her, and she knew they had run out of time.

Dean's eyes went wide and he spun them around, putting his body in front of Cam's, raising the shotgun as he turned. He wasn't fast enough. Cam knew he wouldn't be fast enough, because the thing—the _ghost_—could move like nothing alive had ever moved.

There was a _thwack_, like the sound an axe makes when it hits a block of soft wood. Dean didn't cry out, but he tipped back against Cam and his shotgun clattered to the floor.

Hands on Dean's shoulders, Cam looked up into Rachel Bayer's rotting face. It had been a long time, but she still remembered the photos in the newspapers. Rachel had been pretty; _this_ wasn't. It was pale and monochrome and it reeked like the downwind side of a carcass pile.

A smile, manic and twisted, and the ghost started forward.

The shotgun blast nearly perforated Cam's eardrums. Rachel's ghost blinked out, and Dean collapsed, his full weight suddenly resting on Cam. She went down to the floor with him, trying to soften his fall. He didn't let go of the gun this time.

There was blood everywhere, streaming from the gaping hole in Dean's chest, pooling on the floor, soaking into the front of Cam's shirt. "Oh, Jesus," she said. "Oh, Jesus."

_Dad on his back, the white glint of bone, bleeding she couldn't stop no matter how hard she tried._

It took Dean three tries to say her name. He was breathing in shattered gasps, blood trickling from his mouth. It should have been her down on the floor, dying. He saved her life.

"Cam," he managed. "Cam... go."

Her lungs were wrapped in barbed wire and she was choking on dust and memories. She couldn't move.

_Daddy._

"Cam." Dean grabbed her wrist, his grip tightening as a surge of pain twisted his face. "No... time. Go. Just..."

"No," she said. This wasn't happening again. She wasn't going to sit here and watch him die, and she sure as hell wasn't leaving him. She had spent her life carrying bales of hay and wrestling 300-pound calves. If she had to carry Dean, she would.

"Hang on," she told him. He screamed once when she pulled him up, a rattling cry choked off by the blood in his throat, but Cam didn't slow down.

By the time she stumbled out the front door, Dean was a dead weight and so quiet that she wasn't sure he was still breathing. The first thing Cam saw outside was Valerie, jogging across the snow toward them. Valerie took half of Dean's weight, helped Cam ease him down to the ground. "Shit," she said when she saw the damage.

"Is he..." Cam said. _Please God don't let him be dead._

"He's alive," Valerie said. "I called 911; they should be here before long." She patted Dean's cheek. "Dean! Hey, Dean, come on!"

He moved his head a little, and his eyes cracked open. He whispered something, but it was just a soft brush of air and Cam couldn't tell what he was trying to say. She leaned close, and he tried again, managed a tiny bit of volume this time. "Sammy," he whispered.

Cam looked at Valerie, who shook her head. "Who's Sammy, Dean?" Valerie said. "There was nobody named Sammy here."

Dean coughed, blood dark on his lips. "S...Sammy. Brother."

"Sammy's your little brother?" Valerie took off her coat and spread it on the ground, then gestured for Cam to do the same. "Sammy wasn't here tonight, Dean. He's at home. He's just fine."

Dean nodded a little and his eyes slid closed. Together, Valerie and Cam moved him onto the coats, getting him out of the ice and snow. He moaned and his eyelashes fluttered, but he didn't scream this time.

Cam heard voices, and looked up to see the others headed toward them. Brandon was in the lead; he was wobbling and there was blood on his face but he was standing on his own. It looked like Dean was the only serious casualty.

Valerie stood up. "Okay, people, listen up!" she yelled. "I need your coats. If anybody's got blankets, go get them. We need something to press against the wound—a towel, or a small blanket or a shirt."

Coats started coming off, Daniel went after blankets, and James Nordeman shucked his flannel shirt. Valerie tossed it to Cam and said, "See if you can get the bleeding stopped." Then she started arranging coats over Dean's body, tucking them around his legs and sliding one beneath his head as a pillow.

Dean was still aware, but barely, his eyes fluttering ever so often. He whimpered softly when Cam pressed down on the wound. His breathing was getting worse, louder and more strained, like he had to fight for every lungful of air. He was breathing like a dying man and there was blood between her fingers and it just wouldn't stop coming—

A switch flipped, and Cam went from relatively sane to freaking the hell out in two seconds flat.

Valerie grabbed the front of Cam's shirt, pulled her up and away from Dean, and gave her a shove. Cam's feet got tangled up and she landed on her ass in the snow, shaking like a truck with a blown-out tire. Her head was pounding and there were tears freezing on her cheeks.

"Jesus _Christ,_ McAllister," Valerie hissed. "You think you can hold it together enough to not upset the guy who's _dying?"_

She turned away without waiting for an answer, knelt in the snow beside Dean and lay her palm on his forehead. With her other hand, she pressed down on the bloody wadded-up shirt on his chest. He didn't make a sound.

"For God's sake, Val," Brandon said, shooting Cam an apologetic, if slightly unfocused, look.

"Shut up," Valerie told him, sliding her fingers down to Dean's throat to check his pulse. "Where's the damn ambulance!" she shouted.

It was another five minutes before they started hearing the sirens. Cam stayed down, her ass slowly freezing to the ground, and watched as the snow went dark around Dean's still body. In the harsh moonlight, the spreading blood looked black.

The ambulance pulled to a stop, and EMTs had Dean surrounded within seconds, pushing Valerie away and working with a grim urgency that made Cam's throat feel too narrow. One of them went to Brandon, seeing the blood on his face. When asked a question, he pointed at Cam and Valerie, presumably identifying them as the others who had been inside the house.

"Hey." An EMT—Amy Goldsmith's mom—knelt in the snow beside Cam, reaching out to tilt her chin up. "Camille, are you all right? Brandon said he didn't know if you were hurt."

Ms. Goldsmith's hair looked like spun silver in the moonlight. Cam couldn't stop staring at it, her head buzzing with the clipped conversation going on over Dean's still body.

"Camille," Ms. Goldsmith said a little more forcefully. "Hey, Camille, I need you to answer me, okay? Are you all right?"

Cam kept looking at the spun-silver hair. She was cold and her legs were shaking and nothing felt real. "Please," she said, "just... call me Cam."

"Okay, Cam. Are you injured?"

"I hit my head, but I don't think it's bad." There was still dull pain behind her eyes and the world seemed to be sitting on a rocking chair, but she had felt worse the last time her horse had thrown her into a picket fence.

The other EMTs got Dean moved into the ambulance and slammed the doors behind him. Cam watched the flashing lights until they disappeared into the darkness. She was breathing too fast, and she told herself _Not now, dammit, not now._

Sheriff Reilly was there, and some other cops Cam didn't recognize. One of them headed in her direction, but Ms. Goldsmith waved him away, toward Valerie who was calm and coherent and not hurt at all.

Ms. Goldsmith checked Cam's eyes and said she had to go to the hospital, because her pupils were sluggish and she was maybe hyperventilating a little. Cam nodded and tried to calm down and told Ms. Goldsmith that Daniel would take her to the hospital.

The last thing Cam saw, before Daniel helped her to the car and closed the door for her, was the northern lights dancing green and gold at the far horizon.

* * *

The doctor said she was mildly concussed, but it wasn't bad enough to keep her overnight. He sent her away with painkillers and instructions to take it easy for a few days.

After the doctor was done with her, Sheriff Reilly came in and asked a bunch of questions, and Cam made her responses as carefully non-specific as she could: _It was dark. The flashlights got knocked away. There was somebody there but I couldn't see them. No, I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. It was just a shape._

She hoped Valerie was telling the same vague non-story. It would be a lot easier to get through this if nobody mentioned the word _ghost._ People could believe tales about killers hiding out in abandoned houses; ghosts were another matter.

Sheriff Reilly asked Cam about the shotgun, and she almost panicked because she had totally forgotten about that. "Dean brought it with him," she said. "I guess he was afraid we'd run into a bear or something." Sheriff Reilly didn't look totally convinced, but it wasn't like he'd never seen anybody toting a gun before. Cam's mom kept a twelve-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle in the upstairs closet.

When the gentle interrogation was over, Sheriff Reilly asked Cam if she needed a ride home. She shook her head and told him that Daniel could drop her off.

Cam came out to find Valerie sitting in the waiting room, leaning forward with her elbows propped on her knees. A fringe of dark hair hid her eyes.

Cam sat down in the next chair over and said quietly, "What did you tell them?"

"Nothing specific," Valerie said, brushing her bangs away from her face. "I said it was too dark to see anything but a shadow. You?"

"The same."

Valerie leaned forward, lowering her voice further. "If you ever say anything about a ghost, an apparition, what_ever_ the hell that was—I'll swear you're insane."

Cam held Valerie's gaze. "Likewise," she said, and that was that.

* * *

Mom met Cam at the front door, hands twisted in the front of her shirt. "The sheriff just called," she said. "Are you—"

"Minor concussion. Had worse," Cam said. There was still blood crusted under her fingernails and splattered like rusty paint on the front of her shirt. Mom said something else, but Cam ignored it, went upstairs and sat in a scalding shower until the tops of her knees turned bright red. Methodically, she chewed off her fingernails one by one.

It was past one a.m. when she finally came out of the bathroom. Abby was sitting on Cam's bed, her back against the wall, one bony arm wrapped around her legs. In the dim light from the bathroom, her eyes looked enormous over hollow cheekbones. She was holding Cam's stained blue shirt in her left hand.

"You were wearing a blue shirt the night Daddy died," she said.

Cam curled bleeding fingertips into her palms. Very calmly, she said, "Get out."

Blankets rustled. "Cam—" Abby whispered, her voice full of frayed edges.

Cam didn't look up. She was starting to shake again, and it felt like somebody was tamping down her ribs with the blunt end of a crowbar. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears.

_Dean's breaths crackling like a tarp in a high wind. Dad on his back in the mud and cow shit; blood on his chest, on his lips, on her hands. Dad's shattered voice trying to say her name: "Cam-C-Cami..."_

"Get the hell out," she said.

Without another word, Abby did.

* * *

At eight o'clock the next morning, Cam found Abby sobbing in the bathroom, wedged into the narrow space between the cabinet and the wall. She had been at it for a while; her eyes were swollen and the cuff of her shirt was slick with snot. When Cam knelt down, Abby wouldn't look at her, just stared blankly at the wall.

Cam wondered if she had always sucked this much at being a big sister.

"I'm sorry, okay?" she said. "I'm sorry. I just... I needed..." _To have a freakin' full-fledged breakdown._

Abby sniffled. "Dad wasn't just _yours_, you know," she said on a hiccuping sob. "I loved him too and now he's _dead_ and I miss him all the time and you won't _talk to me_ and sometimes it feels like you died too."

All Cam said, as she eased forward to slide her arm around her sister's shoulders, was "I'm sorry."

* * *

Mom let Cam stay home from school on Monday, but calving season was still in full swing, and it waited for no man. Cam had to take her turns checking just like everybody else. ("Everybody" being Cam and Abby and Mom and the couple of hands who were around during the day. They all wished they could hire a night man, but Mom said they didn't have the money.)

Cam's next meltdown took place in the pen next to the calving shed. Her nose was running again and she was trudging through frozen cow shit and then flash, _Dad on his back eyes open wide blood everywhere not breathing not breathing not—_

"Cam!" Mom's hands were on her shoulders, shaking her so hard her teeth rattled. "Camille!"

She blinked stupidly at the ground, which was a lot closer than it should have been. She was on her knees in the muck and there was a dull fire in her chest because— Oh, yes. Oxygen would be good.

She drew in a lungful of cold air, and Mom sobbed out loud, just once, without tears. For a minute Cam almost thought she was going to get _hugged,_ but instead Mom scrambled to her feet and paced away. "I'm calling Dr. Petersen," she said.

Cam inhaled, and the air was so sharp that it almost hurt worse than not breathing at all.

"I'm calling him right now," Mom said, her back still turned, fumbling for her cell phone with stiff fingers.

Cam closed her eyes. "Mom—"

"No!" Mom spun around, cell phone in hand. "I don't want to hear it, Camille. Not now. This is—you don't screw around with this. You need help."

Cam knew that; she wasn't stupid. What she also knew was that Dr. How-do-you-feel-about-that wasn't going to cut it. The kind of help she needed didn't exist anymore.

(Five months, one week and six days.)

* * *

Back at school on Tuesday, Cam heard bits and pieces of information about Dean over the grapevine. He was in the ICU, and someone had managed to track down his elusive father, so he wasn't alone. He was still in bad shape, Daniel said, but the doctors were hopeful.

Jori sat down next to her at lunch, carrying a tray that contained one slice of bread, two baby carrots, and a small cup of jell-o. That alone would have told Cam that Jori still didn't feel well, even without seeing her pale skin and drawn face. Jori's eyes were decorated in Christmas colors—red spiderweb veins to go with her pine-green irises.

With painstaking care, Jori peeled the crust off her bread and ate it. The rest she tore up into tiny pieces and stirred into her jell-o. When the nauseating concoction was well blended, she said casually, "So Daniel told me what happened."

Cam stared at the limp threads of spaghetti hanging from her fork. "Oh," she said.

"Yeah." Jori nodded. She took a bite of jell-o, swallowed it, and promptly started coughing. Cam patted her awkwardly on the back and handed over a glass of water.

When she finally got the leftover cough under control, Jori chugged the rest of the water and cleared her throat. Voice still a little rough, she said, "Mom's going on a date tonight. And he's hot, so she probably won't be home until late." A sideways glance at Cam. "_Die Hard_ at my place?"

"Oh, hell yes," Cam said. "I'll make Abby take my turn checking cows tonight. She owes me."

There was a reason Cam and Jori had been friends since before they quit wetting their beds: Jori was pretty damn good at knowing what not to say.

If only Cam was half as good at figuring out what _to_ say.

* * *

The couch at Jori's house was ancient and ratty and smelled faintly of cat piss, but her mom had bought a nice big flat-screen TV with last year's Christmas money. It was perfect for watching Bruce Willis shoot people and dig glass out of his feet and be a lot hotter than any bloody, grimy old guy had a right to be. Still, Cam ended up looking at Jori more than the TV. When it came to build, Jori was the opposite of Cam-she had more curves than the road up to Griffith's Pass. Watching buildings blow up was cool, but not nearly as fascinating as the way Jori filled out her black jeans.

_I know we've been friends forever, but there's something I need to tell you,_ Cam said in her head.

_I think you're hot._ Okay, scratch that.

_Do you want to go on a date with me? Like, a real date?_

_I saw you kissing Kate Pierzynski last summer and I wished you were kissing me instead._

_Are you really into girls, or was that just an experiment?_

_If I tell you, will it destroy everything we've built over the past twelve years?_

Jori paused the movie. "Hey, you want popcorn?"

"Sure," Cam said. Just that, and nothing more.

* * *

It was Saturday by the time Cam got a chance to visit Dean. They weren't exactly bosom buddies, but she _needed_ to see him, needed to see for herself that he wasn't dead. Besides, he owed her one hell of an explanation.

Cam approached the nurse's station feeling like an intruder, expecting-and half hoping-that she'd get turned away. No such luck. The on-duty nurse smiled and said, "Go ahead, hon. His dad might still be there, but he's about to leave to go pick up Dean's little brother. I'm sure Dean will enjoy the company."

Judging by the voices coming from Dean's room, his dad was definitely still in there. A peek through the window showed that the aforementioned Mr. Tyler was a big, dark-haired man, somewhat the worse for wear. One side of his face was dark with bruising, and his left arm was in a sling. As for Dean, he still looked bad, but nothing like the way he'd looked bleeding to death in the snow last Friday night.

Dean's dad was talking. His words were muffled by the closed door, but Cam could still make them out.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Dean's shoulder hitched in a tiny shrug that made his face scrunch with pain. He didn't say anything.

"Your second goddamn hunt, and you almost get yourself killed!" Dean's dad wasn't yelling, but it might've been less intimidating if he had been.

"Dad..." Dean sounded tired, his breathing still raspy and halting. "Look, they were going whether I went with them or not. And you were gone, and I didn't... I couldn't let them go in there by themselves and get killed."

Silence for a moment.

"I did... the best I could," Dean said in a small voice.

A sigh from his dad. "I know, kid. Just... don't scare me like that, okay? I thought..." he scrubbed a shaky hand over his busted-up face.

This time it was Dean who said, "I know."

From what Cam could tell, Dean's dad was mad at him for saving her life. She figured she should probably be pissed about that, but, well. It wasn't her kid lying in that bed, broken up inside and so pale that he matched the sheets.

"I better go get Sammy," Dean's dad said. "You'll be okay while I'm gone?"

"Yeah, go."

Dean's dad reached out and patted his son's arm. Cam couldn't be totally sure, but she thought his hand was trembling. He pushed himself up from the chair with a slight grimace, and for the first time Cam noticed the railroad-track stitches running down the side of his face.

She moved quickly away from the door, because Dean's dad was really rather intimidating and she didn't want him to think she'd been eavesdropping. (Which she totally had been; she just didn't want him to know about it.)

He left without so much as a glance in her direction. In addition to everything else, he was limping pretty badly. Cam shook her head, gave a dry whistle. Was getting hurt some kind of family pastime?

She knocked on the door, then opened it without waiting for Dean to answer. He gave a pale smile when he saw her.

"Hey, McAllister. You okay?"

She could have laughed at that. Here he was, two days out of intensive care, asking her if she was all right.

"Yeah," she said, "I'm fine. And you look a hell of a lot better than you did last time I saw you."

"That's probably not saying much," he said wryly. "Doctor says I'll be off my feet for a while yet, but it beats being dead."

"Yeah," Cam said quietly.

Dean waved toward the chair at his beside, trying valiantly to hide the pain the motion caused. Probably everything hurt him right now, breathing not excluded.

Cam sat down, trying to figure out how to start the conversation she very much needed them to have. _So, Dean... you knew there would be a ghost in the Halloran house?_

He tackled the subject before Cam had settled on an approach. "What'd you tell the police?"

"Same story Valerie gave—it was too dark to see anything but a shape, so we have no idea who attacked us."

"You think they bought it?" Dean shifted, searching for a comfortable position, which likely didn't exist for somebody who was hurt as bad as he was.

"Sheriff Reilly seemed pretty curious about the shotgun, so I told him you were scared of bears." She gave a one-shoulder shrug. "Yeah, I think they bought it. What else are they gonna do?"

"Good point."

For a moment, Cam listened to the hypnotic beeping of Dean's heart monitor. Eyes fixed on the wavy, constant green lines, she said, "So, that was a ghost."

Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, yeah."

"And you knew it would be there."

"I... suspected it might." He drew a shallow breath, rough enough to make Cam wince in sympathy. "Rachel Bayer died in that house, and I think she was pretty pissed off that everybody thought it was an accident."

"She was murdered?"

"More than likely. Ghosts are... well, some of the things you hear about them are true. They're usually the result of violent deaths, or some sort of unfinished business. Some people just can't let go, and they end up like wounded animals, lashing out at anything that gets too close."

_Ghosts. Holy shit._ She'd known for a week, but hearing Dean talk about it so calmly was beyond surreal.

"And they're vulnerable to shotguns?"

"Salt, actually." A trace of the former cockiness showed on Dean's face. "We load the shells with rock salt. It doesn't kill them, but it holds the sons of bitches off until we can salt and burn their bodies. That's how to get rid of them for good."

_Holy shit._ "'We'?"

"Yeah, it's... kind of the family business."

"Your dad." She waved a hand toward her face. "A ghost did that to him?"

"Well, no, actually. It was a—"

"Never mind, I'm pretty sure I don't want to know." _Holy fuck,_ she thought, because _holy shit_ just wasn't cutting it anymore.

"If it makes you feel any better," Dean said, "Rachel's taken care of. She won't be hurting anybody else."

Yeah, that really didn't help much, because _ghosts_ plural meant that there were more of them out there. People died violent deaths all the time. There could be ghosts _anywhere_, possibly even in the closet that her seven-year-old self had been so afraid of.

_Holy fuck._

"How do you keep them out?" Cam said.

"Out of your house, you mean? Salt. Lay down lines of it at the doors and windows. As long as the line isn't broken, ghosts can't cross it."

Cam was pretty sure she had finally passed into straitjacket territory, but she couldn't help thinking that Dean knew what he was talking about. He'd known about Rachel. He had held her off long enough to save all of their lives.

"Rachel's ghost," she said. "Was that why your dad moved here in the first place?"

"One of the reasons," Dean said. He coughed, and it tore a sound like a whine from his throat. Cam pretended not to hear. The heart monitor beeped erratically for a moment, and she was about to call for a nurse when it finally settled down.

There was sweat on Dean's forehead and his knuckles were white against the sheet. Cam half-rose from her chair. "Are you—do you need—"

"Fine," he rasped. "I'm fine. Sit down." With visible effort, he unclenched his hand and pointed at the chair. Cam eased back into it, feeling completely useless.

When Dean continued, he sounded a little stronger. "My dad had a job down south of here, which is where he got hurt. He was gonna take care of the Halloran place when he got back."

"But Valerie and her brainless entourage organized their little outing before he got the chance," Cam finished.

"Yeah. And I was the only one who had any idea what they were getting into."

"Damn," she said softly, remembering the nervousness in his voice, the way he'd tried to talk Valerie out of going. _Your second goddamn hunt,_ his dad had said. Dean wasn't experienced at this. He'd been scared, and he had saved their lives nonetheless.

She was trying to come up with a way to tell him that when he said, out of the blue, "Listen, I'm sorry. For the thing with Jori."

Cam oozed down in her seat and stared intently at the wall behind Dean's head. "What are you talking about?"

He snorted. "C'mon, Cam... it's not like I missed the fact that you constantly stare at her ass."

She shot upright. "I do not!"

"Yes, you do." Dean was wearing a smug smile, and it made him look considerably more like his old self. "I should know," he said, which was true, because he constantly ogled girls' assets... just like Cam did. Well, shit.

She buried her face in her hands. "I'm turning into a teenage male asshole," she muttered through her fingers. _Among other things,_ she thought. _Cam McAllister: cowgirl, head case, shitty big sister, teenage male asshole._

"Hey, being a teenage male asshole isn't all bad," Dean said. She glanced up at him. Yep, still smirking. It was the same expression that had made her hate him at the beginning, but now all she could think was that he was smiling and breathing and _not dying_. Not dead, unlike the last person whose blood got under her fingernails.

On impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him soundly. Let it never be said that Camille Elizabeth McAllister didn't know how to kiss.

When she pulled back, Dean was grinning triumphantly. "Was that for saving your life, or just for being awesome?" he asked.

"That," Cam said, "was for not being quite as much of an asshole as I thought you were."

Dean snorted, then winced. "Thank you for that glowing commendation," he said. "Can I put it on my resume?"

"Go right ahead. But let's not forget that I saved _your_ life, too."

"I could never forget," he said. "How can I possibly thank you? Oh, wait, I can think of a way." His eyebrows wiggled suggestively, and Cam couldn't help but laugh. Even lying in a hospital bed after getting his ass handed to him by a ghost, he was a complete dork.

"Did you not notice I was staring at _Jori's_ ass, not yours?" she said.

"Oh, I noticed. I figured I could thank you by telling Jori you're a pretty decent kisser, and you could thank me by letting me watch." Again with the leer, but he had just moved out of humorous territory. Cam started looking at the wall again.

"Oh." Dean's voice went soft. "She doesn't know?"

"Nope."

He made a _huh_ sound. "Well, I guess that's up to you."

"Yeah," she said shortly, "it is."

Someone tapped on the door, and Dean looked up. The change in him was dramatic and immediate. He broke into a genuine smile—not sarcastic, not lecherous, just _happy_. Cam glanced at the doorway, wanting to see the person who could make Dean Tyler light up like a Christmas tree.

It was a kid, probably about Abby's age—twelve, maybe thirteen. He was slightly chubby, with floppy dark hair and green eyes a lot like Dean's. The two of them didn't look much alike other than the eyes, but Cam knew immediately that this had to be Dean's little brother.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean said, still smiling like the best thing in the whole world had just shown up in his hospital room.

Dean's dad appeared behind Sammy. He looked at Cam, cleared his throat politely. Cam knew when she wasn't wanted. She stood up, shoved her hands into her pockets. "So, Dean," she said, "I have to go, but it was good to... you know... I'm glad you're getting better."

"Thanks, Cam," Dean said, not taking his eyes off his dad and brother. She passed them on her way to the door, and Dean's dad tossed her a distracted little smile. Even with the bruised face, that smile gave her some idea where Dean had gotten his looks from.

Cam looked back through the window, watching as Sammy perched on the chair next to Dean's bed, his feet swinging. Dean's dad looked down at him with gentle eyes, and after a minute he reached out to smooth a hand over Dean's hair. The sight made Cam's throat ache, and she turned quickly away. Looked back once, at the closed little circle—Dean and Sammy and their dad, ragged at the edges but holding together.

She thought of her own family, of Abby's gangly limbs and haunted wartime eyes. Of Mom, taking so many night checks that she looked like the walking dead, and persistently attempting to make breakfast even though her cooking would never taste like Dad's.

They were busted up, and maybe they all sucked at being a family. Maybe Dad had been the glue that held them together, with his waffles every morning and his chocolate cakes for birthdays and his ability to get them to _talk_ to him in ways they could never talk to each other.

They were all lost without him, but this was all they had left. It was all she had.

* * *

The house was quiet when Cam got home. Abby was folded up on the windowsill, reading _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. She didn't look up when Cam tromped in brushing snow out of her hair.

"Hey," Cam said, "where's Mom?"

Abby turned the page and stayed quiet just long enough to make a point. "Checking on the heavies," she said finally.

Cam nodded, and then she went down to the cellar (which felt really freaking creepy now, even though she was pretty sure there weren't any ghosts in it) and found a bag of salt. She went from window to window, opening each one and pouring salt down into the frame where it would be less noticeable. She was already doomed to therapy—if Mom found out about this whole ghost thing, she'd have Cam _committed_.

The window where Abby was sitting would have to wait until later. Cam hauled the bag of salt upstairs and did the windows there too, and then she moved the rug in Abby's room and laid down a circle of salt around the bed. She pried up the threshold strip at the door and laid a line under it, too, just for good measure.

_Violent deaths,_ Dean had said. _Unfinished business._ She had spent every moment since then trying not to think about what that might mean, trying not to think about who had died on this particular piece of ground.

Cam replaced the threshold strip and took the bag of salt back down to the basement. She came back upstairs, retrieved her coat, and headed outside, walking like she had somewhere to be.

It was the last place on the planet she wanted to see again, but she had to know.

* * *

The corral was empty and quiet and looked just like a dozen other corrals. Looking at it made sweat freeze into a thin layer of ice over Cam's palms. She hadn't been here in a long time.

(Five months, two weeks and four days.)

"Dad?" Cam said. She felt seven years old, searching for closet ghosts in the dark.

"Daddy, are you here?" She wrapped her fingers around the open ziploc bag of salt in her pocket, remembering Dean's words: _They end up like wounded animals, lashing out at anything that gets too close._

She turned a slow circle, seeing only ice-crusted snow and gray pickets worn thin by years of harsh weather. She waited, but there was nothing—no wind, no hair-raising chill, not even the faint scent of Old Spice on the air. Wherever Dad was, there was no bridge she could cross to find him, no pane of smoked glass she could look through to see his silhouette.

He had let go, had moved on to wherever the dead went. (_Please,_ she thought, _please let it be somewhere good._) He had gone, but Cam was still stuck in this damned corral, holding him while he died. Dad wasn't the ghost in this story; she was.

She stood for a long time, watching her white-fog breath disappear into the cold air. And then, finally, she turned her back on the dead silence and went home to her family.

* * *

**(end)**

* * *

**1.** Every time you leave feedback, a plot bunny gets its wings. I bet you didn't know plot bunnies even had wings, did you? Well, mine do. They have leathery bat wings, and glowing red eyes, and fangs. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is, my plot bunnies and I adore feedback.

**2.** I have cheerfully disregarded the fact that the Winchesters didn't start using salt in their shotguns until after Sam left for Stanford. When I was writing the haunted house scene, I decided that a shotgun was superior to those little packets of salt from McDonald's, so I went with the shotgun. Not that teen!Dean wouldn't have looked heroic brandishing wee packets of salt.


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